Consequence
by Mrs. Crocodile
Summary: When President Petrelli got the call from Agent Parkman of Homeland Security telling him that Elle Bishop had been captured, he had an unexpected reaction. “I want you to bring her to me.” Five Years Gone universe. COMPLETE.
1. Prologue: November 8, 2006

**Disclaimer:** This story is based on characters and situations created and owned entirely by other people. It also employs quotes from sources own entirely by other people. I am not making any money off of anything in this story.

**Author's Note:** If you have not seen the episode "Five Years Gone," go watch it. This will still be here when you get back. It's not so important for this prologue, but there will be spoilers, and I warned you. The events of that alternate timeline are open to interpretation in a lot of places, and I will be interpreting them fairly broadly. That's another warning. (And if you're wondering, I did omit one of the definitions below because it didn't really fit.)

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**Consequence**

**Summary:** When President Petrelli got the call from Agent Parkman of Homeland Security telling him that Elle Bishop had been captured, he had an unexpected reaction. "I want you to bring her to me." (Five Years Gone universe.)

**Spoilers Through:** 03x08-Villains, especially 01x20-Five Years Gone.

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con·se·quence

(kŏn'sĭ-kwěns', -kwəns) n.

1. Something that logically or naturally follows from an action or condition.

2. The relation of a result to its cause.

3. A logical conclusion or inference.

4. Importance in rank or position: _man of consequence._

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_I've been a bad, bad girl. I've been careless with a delicate man._-Fiona Apple

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**Prologue—November 8, 2006**

Elle Bishop walked out the door of the research facility she had called home for almost as long as she could remember. Something was happening that evening. Something big. Something her father did not want her to know about.

She tried sidling up to a couple of the younger male agents who had always been so willing to fill her in on the scuttlebutt around the Company, but even they would not talk to her. It probably was not even anything that exciting. The last big Company project had been getting Nathan Petrelli elected to Congress. Next, the goal was to make him President in as little time as possible. From what she could tell, whatever was happening was the next step in that plan. So she could just wait, and all would be revealed.

The trouble was that Elle was not good at waiting. All afternoon, people had rushed by her, busy, minds full of important information. She could have been imagining that last part. Either way, she needed to get some fresh air.

She was outside for all of ten minutes when her father called, frantic. "Where are you? Why aren't you in your room?"

God, he was treating her like a teenager who missed curfew. "I just went outside."

"But you're here? At the facility? In Hartsdale?"

Elle rolled her eyes. She was technically off Primatech grounds, but she was not going to tell him that. "Yes."

"You need to get back inside. I want to see you immediately."

That made it sound like maybe he had a reason. Maybe he wasn't just being overbearing and overprotective. Maybe she was finally going to be let in on this big mystery assignment. She was turning around to go back when the sky to the south of her exploded.

There was one other person on the sidewalk, woman walking her large dog. When the explosion happened, she ducked to the ground covering her dog's head. It did not occur to Elle to duck. Instead, she took a couple steps toward the explosion. It was too far away for her to be worried about debris. She had not really expected to see anything except maybe a little smoke, but there was much more than that. It looked like a mushroom cloud was rising over—she checked the street to make sure she had her directions right—New York City.

She forgot that she was holding a cell phone pressed to her ear until her father's voice came out of the speaker. "Well, there goes Sylar."

She nodded absently, not understanding what that meant. Then it registered. "You mean-"

"Yep. Your little mistake with Bennet has finally been cleaned up."

That was not what she was going to ask. The first thing that came to mind was that meant he knew about it. They all knew about it. That woman was still there with her stupid dog, and Elle knew that she could not say anything about that. That was replaced in her mind by the Sylar portion of it anyway. She kept walking toward the mushroom cloud, away from the Company. "I didn't make a mistake, Daddy," she said in a shaky voice. "I did exactly what I was told. _Exactly_ what I was told."

She was so sick of him making it her fault. When the Company could not catch Sylar, it became a mistake, and not one for which the Company was willing to take responsibility. She had accepted her father's blame and disappointment without a word of contradiction, but this-

She sank to her knees right there on the sidewalk, which really hurt, and threw up in the grass beside her. She dropped the phone without hanging it up, not caring anymore.

In the days and weeks that followed, Elle saw the newspaper articles and the television reports. It was much worse that she had expected. Half of New York City gone. Four million people dead. She saw Sylar's face more times than she could count, in pictures and a grainy surveillance video. He was the bomb. He was dead. Elle did not know what she was supposed to feel about either of those things. This was the Company's plan, and she was a Company girl. And that was all she allowed herself to feel.

Six months after the bomb, the sky came crashing down again, this time in a much less literal way.


	2. Part One: The Oval Office

**Author's Note**: Just as an F.Y.I., this is a four part story with an prologue and an epilogue. (So, a six part story.) It's not going to be as drawn out (and meandering) as other chaptered stories I've written.

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_I was there when they dropped the bomb. You know I remember the bomb, and I still hear the bomb, and I still fight the bomb. You know I still fear the bomb. You know I still hate the bomb. Sometimes I still get the call._-Chantal Kreviazuk

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**Part One—The Oval Office**

Noah Bennet and Matt Parkman had an arrangement. Noah would hand over the dangerous evolved humans, and Matt would look the other way when it came to the harmless ones. Noah had no doubt that Elle Bishop fell into the former category.

Elle sought him out four years after Sylar blew up half of New York, about three and a half years after the Linderman Act went into effect, authorizing the rounding up and imprisonment of her kind. Whatever arrangements Elle had made up to that point fell through, and she heard that Noah was the go-to guy for finding new arrangements. He did not feel the least bit guilty setting her up for Parkman; he knew what she was capable of, especially when cornered.

Elle was considered high priority at one time. There were unsubstantiated rumors that she had engaged in acts of "terrorism" in the year immediately following the Act. She disappeared after that and was now fairly low on the list of threats to national security, but she was on that list all the same. Parkman called the President directly to let him know about the capture, as was custom when a person from the list was apprehended. Since she had not done anything in years, he expected President Petrelli to curtly thank him and for that to be it. Instead, Petrelli said, "I want you to bring her to me."

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Elle sat in the Oval Office, heavily restrained. It was not a place she ever thought she would be. She wondered if being brought directly to the President was a good sign or a very, very bad one.

It occurred to Elle that she was one of those dangerous people who was in the know about the Petrelli family. She knew about Nathan's parents and his brother, and most importantly, she knew that Nathan himself had an ability. She just was not sure if Nathan knew that she knew that, nor was she sure what happened to those people who did. She looked around to see that Parkman was gone and there was no Secret Service in the room. She was alone with the President. Again, she did not know if that was good or bad for her.

Elle had met Nathan Petrelli once before, but she doubted that he remembered. She was seven or eight at the time, and he was home from the Naval Academy for some event at his parents' house. In her memory, it was a Christmas party. She only remembered Nathan because of his fancy white uniform. She had no memory of Peter, who must have been there too considering his age at the time. This office was much more imposing than that uniform had been, but she was far too worried about her future to be impressed.

After an agonizingly long silence, Nathan gave her a reassuring smile. He did not seem to know what he wanted to say to her. He got up from his desk and looked out the window. He was not facing her when he said, "I knew your father. He was a close family friend."

That was an exaggeration. In her lifetime, Elle's father had not been particularly close with the Petrellis. It would be more honest to say their parents were old friends, and she felt that he was buttering her up for something. "If you want me to tell you where my father is, you're wasting your time. I have no idea. I haven't seen him since this apartheid started."

Nathan shook his head with a smug smile. "That's not why you're here."

Elle was a little disappointed. It made sense to her that he would want to know her father's location. To her knowledge, the United States government had not been able to capture any of the surviving founders of the Company, and that had to bother Nathan. But that was not why she was there, and she was running out of ideas. "Then what do you want from me?"

He crossed over to where she was sitting. "I don't want anything from you, Elle." That sounded ominous. "I just want to talk. If I remove your restraints, can I trust you not to shock or try to kill me?"

Elle was a little wary. When she was a child, the psychologists always "just wanted to talk," and it never turned out well. She wiggled her arms as much as she could in the restraints. "I have no reason to kill you, Mr. President. It wouldn't accomplish anything."

He smiled the trademarked toothy Nathan Petrelli smile. "I'm glad you understand that." He moved behind her and started to loosen the bindings. "You know, I'm not a bad person. I'm just a man who has been put in an impossible situation."

She rubbed her wrists. "An impossible situation that you started."

"I didn't start this, Elle. This started when a man blew up four million people and half of the City of New York. I had nothing to do with that, but I was put in the position of responding to the public outcry. I never aspired this. I inherited this position after that tragic accident that took the President from us. My country called on me to be a leader, and I did the best I could."

At that moment, Elle wanted to shock Nathan and his pompous, sanctimonious speech, even if it would serve no purpose and put her in imminent danger. When she was younger, Elle would not have hesitated, but being older and slightly wiser, she was able to content herself with rolling her eyes. When the Linderman Act was passed, she and others had responded with force and what was labeled terrorism. Like Peter, she eventually gave up the fight. Others went on. The fact of the matter was that she had not lost anything the way someone like Hiro Nakamura had, and she eventually saw the value in living a quiet life of passing herself off as normal. She attributed learning how to be normal, for the first time in her life, with mellowing her out and teaching her self-control.

She wondered what Nathan's goal was in telling her this glorified version of his personal history. She knew it was sugar-coated, that at the very least, he knew about the bomb and did nothing to try to stop it. She was unsure what Nathan was supposed to do, but she knew that he had been given a choice, and he chose to let the future unfold in this way. She did not want to tell him about what she knew, however. She wanted him to do the talking. She just wished he would get to the reason he had Parkman bring her there. She could not help but make one point though. "Fine, you say this is an impossible situation, but you have all the power, Nat—Mr. President. I admit that I committed criminal acts. I was responsible for the blackout of the entire eastern seaboard in October of '07 and the blackout of... pretty much all the blackouts you think I might have been involved in. I caused the failure of that back-up generator at the penitentiary in Utah and allowed other... revolutionaries to help two hundred prisoners to escape. So, if you want to put me in prison, I probably deserve it. But you can release all those other people who have never done anything to anyone. You can stop the imprisonment of innocent people. You have options; they don't."

Nathan watched her with a great deal of interest as she spoke. He gave an almost imperceivable shake of his head with something resembling amazement on his face. It seemed that she was not quite what he was expecting. "Only the most dangerous of you are put in prisons. Most of your kind live normal lives."

That was not true at all. "Normal lives aren't lived in shanty towns behind barbed wire. Those people are monitored and tracked. They're not allowed to leave their 'homes.' They may not all be in prison, but they are imprisoned."

The corner of his mouth twitched. "And what do you think would happen if I released all of those people into the general population? How do you think the public would react to that? Most of the innocent ones that you're talking about won't have a way to protect themselves from the hatred of their fellow citizens. Whether you like it or not, evolved humans are safer where they are."

Elle could not believe he was making that argument. "Like the Japanese-Americans were during World War Two?"

He gave a wide grin now, like he was really happy to hear her response. "Exactly. You know, FDR is considered a great president today."

She could not be sure, but she did not think it was the comparison to Roosevelt that made him smile like that. It seemed that he was just enjoying her repartee. When she left the domestic terrorism business, she thought that she had put all of this behind her, but she slipped back into the rhetoric so easily. Since her retirement, there had been one major development in the evolved humans field. Since she had the attention of the President of the United States, she decided to ask about it. "And how were you protecting us when you outlawed our breeding?"

"That was Congress. You see, Elle, the federal government is made up of checks and balances, and as President, I don't have the power to do much unilaterally."

Elle was a little surprised that he had reverted to being so condescending. "You can skip the civics lesson. Congress did not have a two thirds majority. If you vetoed it, it never would have gone through." She had watched the news about that bill very closely. It was her vehemence against such measures that caused her neighbors to start questioning whether she was too sympathetic to those "freaks," and eventually she was forced to go to Noah Bennet for help. She did not blame Noah for turning her over to the authorities. He had his own battles to fight, and she had been a dangerous radical the last time he had seen her.

They were getting off topic, and Elle wanted to get back on track. "Why am I here?"

Nathan sighed and leaned back against his desk. "You fascinate me, Elle. I've been reading everything I could find about you, especially from your years with the Company."

Elle did not know what he was implying by referencing her time at the Company. She thought it might have something to do with the fact that she helped to lock up evolved humans for years, but that was different. Those people were specifically chosen because of their dangerousness. "I'm not going to defend what I did for the Company, but it does not compare to what you are doing now."

Nathan was not fazed by this. "Is it true that you knew Sylar?"

The question seemed to come out of left field, and Elle considered denying it completely. She did not think about Sylar much anymore because when she did, she knew it was her fault. She could tell herself that the Company would have found someone else to do it if she refused, and she could remind herself that Linderman and Angela always wanted the bomb to go off. At times, and after all these years, it was possible for her to feel completely absolved of guilt. But when she thought about it, she knew that she was partly to blame for Sylar becoming a bomb and everything that followed that. If nothing else, she could have let him swing when she first came into his shop. "No, I didn't know Sylar. I knew Gabriel Gray."

"That's an interesting distinction. Do you think Sylar was different from Gabriel somehow?"

She had made a similar distinction once before, when talking to another Company agent, and he had not understood. People don't change that much that quickly. Sylar must have always been in his nature. Elle did not know if that was true. She knew that he had already killed a man before she ever met him, but she had never thought that the Gabriel she knew would be capable of the things Sylar did. Maybe without her there to push him, he wouldn't have been. "I don't know. Like I said, I didn't know him afterwards. Is that why I'm here? To talk about him?"

That was just another guess, and she was surprised when Nathan nodded. "You are one of the few people who is still alive to give a firsthand account of who he was, and you are the only one I haven't spoken to yet."

Elle did not know what good it would do to revisit that time. "Why would it matter who he was? He's dead now. Can't we just leave it alone?"

Nathan shook his head. "He was just one man. What happens when the next Sylar comes along? I need to know what we're up against. I have wanted to hear your version of what happened more than any other."

Elle sighed. There were easier ways to avoid this than to fight about it. All she had to do was give him a quick recap and be done with it. "I don't really remember it that well. It was just another assignment, like any other. Nothing special at the time. When I met him, he was going to kill himself. I stopped him." She shrugged. "Later, I brought him a pie... cherry, I think."

Then she saw it, a flicker of anger behind his eyes when she mixed up the pies. It was gone almost as soon as it appeared. If she had blinked just then, she would have missed it. Elle did not even know why she had lied about that, but now she was glad that she had. The reaction made no sense for Nathan. Even if he knew what kind of pie it was, it should not have been suspicious for her to forget a detail like that after almost five years. There was no reason for Nathan to be angry. She began to doubt that he was telling her everything. As she wondered why he would care so much about Sylar, she remembered Peter saying that he had not spoken to his brother in years. And while that repeated in her mind, she thought about the fact that it could not be common practice to leave the President alone in the Oval Office with a suspected terrorist, confirmed terrorist now. There was also a level of familiarity in the way he said her name that did not make sense for Nathan. In fact, he had felt no need to make any kind of introduction when she was first brought in, as if they already knew each other. Meeting once at a Christmas party twenty years before did not explain that. She looked up into his cold, hard eyes and felt a chill run down her spine. No, it couldn't be...

Nathan cleared his throat in impatience. "And then what?"

She remembered that Sylar had reportedly killed Claire Bennet. She heard from Hiro that Sylar had regenerated after being impaled by a sword. If he could survive that, why would everyone assume that he died in the explosion? Why had that never occurred to her before that moment? She no longer thought it wise to pretend that he did not matter. "It was peach. His favorite, but I didn't know that when I made it. If you want to know the truth, it wasn't like the other missions. I say that because I can't stand that I was a part of the Sylar story. I say it because I don't want to remember, but I'll never forget. I can't—I can't talk about him."

She watched his face carefully as she spoke, and although it was subtle, she could see that her words were making him happy. A momentary feeling of triumph gave way to her blood running cold. If she was right, then he was Sylar, a killer who knew about her ability and might have a grudge against her. It meant that he killed Nathan, Candice or someone like her, and who knew how many other people. She wondered what she should do. Should she kill him on the spot, setting the equality movement back decades or more by assassinating the President? And if a sword and a bomb didn't do the trick, how would she kill him anyway? She was not even sure that it was him. She could never really be sure unless he said it. It was far more likely that this was the real Nathan Petrelli sitting in front of her. The simplest explanation was the best; that was Occam's razor or something. She was just seeing what she wanted to see, flickers and moments that supported her hypothesis. She told herself that she was being ridiculous. The kidnappings, the laws, the hiding, they had all turned her into a crazy conspiracy theorist. Finally meeting the man who had caused her and her kind so much misery, she wanted to find evil in him.

"Okay," he said. "You don't have to talk about it. I didn't realize it would be so difficult for you."

He would have pressed, right? If it was Nathan, he would have pressed this terrorist to tell him what he wanted to know, to tell him what he brought her there to find out. Only Sylar would be satisfied by her answer. The only way he could have gotten what he wanted out of what she said was if he just wanted to hear her side of it to find out how she felt about what she did to Sylar. She supposed there might be a reason Nathan would want to know that, but she did not know how to let this Sylar theory go.

_So now what?_ she asked herself. She tried to think of a way to get to the truth, knowing that the truth, if it was what she suspected, would only lead to her certain death. While she thought about that, she wanted to keep the conversation going. She was sure that he could see that she was distracted, and she looked back at him and shook her head. "You didn't realize that it would be difficult for me to talk about the time when I created a serial killer who killed half the inhabitants of New York?"

Nathan—if it was Nathan—leaned forward. "No. I didn't. Your psych evaluations paint you as a sociopath who destroyed numerous lives with no remorse. I thought you would have no trouble recounting the way you set up Sylar."

Now Elle needed to evaluate everything he said from two perspectives, first what Nathan would mean by it, then what Sylar would. With Nathan, it would either be fairly straightforward or there was a slight possibility he might be trying to recruit her to Homeland Security. She actually liked that idea. She would never do it, but she liked being appreciated for her talents and training. Besides, she might not know where to find her father or any other founders, but she did know how to get in touch with Hiro Nakamura. Her files must imply that she would make a great spy.

If this was Sylar, however, it had a completely different connotation. She realized that she had a reason for wanting to see Sylar in Nathan, other than just trying to find evil in what was more likely misguided leadership. A living Sylar would give her the chance to talk to him. There were so many things she had wished she could say to him over the years. After leaving his apartment that night, there had never been any safe way to get near him. When he was locked up in Odessa, her father had hidden that fact from her, and maybe he was right to do so because maybe she would have ended up just as dead as Eden McCain. Only Sylar could give her the answers she needed. He was the only one who might know if she could have made a difference, if she could have prevented this. For that reason, she became sure that this was not Sylar, that those answers had died with him. She had never been the kind of person that life gave second chances to.

She put Sylar out of her mind and thought about what Nathan had said about those psychological evaluations. She had always known that there was something wrong with her. She could see that her reactions to things were not the same as other people's. When she killed that witness during her first mission, she had not seen anything wrong with that. They were supposed to be avoiding detection, right? Her method seemed just as valid as the Haitian's, who, she might add, was not available at the time. She grew to accept that she probably was a sociopath and that she should try to conform to other people's norms. Fine. Accepting the pronouncement that she had paranoid delusions took longer. She still was not sure about that. Oh, maybe she was paranoid, but she was right to be. Hadn't the government rounded up thousands of innocent people and outlawed their breeding? That was not a delusion. Noah Bennet had turned her over to the authorities. Nathan Petrelli and Matt Parkman had betrayed their own people. The Haitian, who once believed that they had all been given a gift from God, had become an important cog in the government's machine of bigotry. Elle couldn't trust anyone, but that did not make her crazy. Although, it did occur to her that thinking the President of the United States was an infamous serial killer in disguise was probably the definition of "paranoid delusion."

For two years, Elle had pretended that she was normal psychologically as well as evolutionarily. She thought that she had succeeded in becoming well-adjusted, but this came back to her easily too. It was as though just being back in that world had reminded her of who she really was. She framed her response for Nathan, not Sylar. "I think there are degrees. Yeah, there were definitely times when I didn't feel that I was in the wrong, but other people in the Company disagreed. Other times, I felt bad about the lives I destroyed. I don't know if it was enough to be considered remorse; I never lost any sleep, and I kept doing the same things I always did, so probably not. But Sylar, he was different. What I did to him—That's not even the point. It's my part in the deaths of those four million people. Over the years, I've lost a lot of sleep over them."

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**Author's Note:** I swear this is not a spoiler. So, you know how on Lost, everything that's unexplained is explained as "It's magic"? (If you didn't know that, it is. But it's still awesome) Here, I feel like anything could be explained by "They're both crazy".


	3. Part Two: Memory Lane

**Author's Note:** Originally, the quote for this part was "In the night, I hear them talk, coldest story ever told. Somewhere far along this road, he lost his soul to a woman so heartless." (Kanye West). And then I heard "Peaceful Easy Feeling." So you can pick the quote you want, but I'm kicking it old school. (Yes, I actually just said that. Wrote it, whatever.)

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_I found out a long time ago what a woman can do to your soul. Oh, but she can't take you any way you don't already know how to go._--The Eagles

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**Part Two—Memory Lane **

Sylar had become obsessed with Elle ever since he was granted access to the deepest, most top secret records from the Company. He wanted to know everything about this woman who had pretended to like him so that the Company could see how he got powers. The first things he got were the psychologists' notes, and he was really surprised to read their recommendations for permanent incarceration. They thought she was too dangerous to ever be released into the public at large. He knew that she could not really be the person she had pretended to be, and he did not know what he had expected to find out about her, but he never would have guessed that she was the kind of person who spent much of her childhood heavily medicated because she was a danger to herself and others even at that young age. The files were a little less clear about why those recommendations were not followed, but he thought it probably had something to do with her father's position in the Company.

There was not much about her in Sylar's own file. The description of the assignment was very utilitarian and did not tell him anything he did not already know about what happened. He knew that Nathan had questioned Noah about it before Sylar killed and replaced him, but he did not know exactly what Noah had said. The notes Nathan took on the conversation were not very informative either. Sylar had skimmed the other assignments for her name, and that yielded some interesting results. On what appeared to be her first mission, she killed the woman she was questioning. The other agent, her partner, had written up a report on the incident, and the margins were filled with red penned notes from the doctors, renewing their objections to her being allowed out of the facility. After that, the reports from her assignments were vague, but, reading between the lines, it seemed that over the years she had repeatedly killed innocent bystanders and walked away with no remorse.

By the time he read those reports, Sylar was already President. He had no real reason to be angry with Elle. This probably would never have happened if she had not intervened. In fact, he was grateful that she had stopped him from killing himself just when he was finally becoming great, finally realizing his true potential. Hell, if anything, he should be thanking her. When he read those files, he realized that he had never really known her at all. He did feel that he had gotten a fairly clear picture from the files, especially after the last piece of the puzzle was recovered from the computers. Bob Bishop had kept dozens of documents recording the results of various experiments. Sylar felt that something like that surely would have come up in the psychologists' reports, but upon his re-reading, he did not get the impression that they were even aware of the experiments.

When he got word that Elle had been captured, he did not know what exactly he wanted from her, other than her power. He had never had one of them brought to the White House, especially one that he intended to kill. He tried not to make any official contact with those people. In fact, it would have been better for him if she was never caught, if she just disappeared like all the others. Having all the evolved humans going into hiding was very convenient for Sylar's purposes. No one ever asked what happened to Candice Willmer. They all assumed she was living happily somewhere with a new face.

He thought about it while waiting for Parkman to bring Elle in from Texas, and if he wanted to kill her, he would need her to break out of custody at some point. Otherwise people would notice that she was missing. As soon as they were left alone, he released her from her restraints in order to facilitate this. But she did not even try to escape, which she easily could have done. Someone as smart and well trained as she was must have noticed that the Haitian had not accompanied her into the building. There was always some reason to keep the Haitian away from Sylar, something that was more important for him to be doing. Sylar liked to avoid meeting with Parkman face to face too. Luckily, his position neatly explained his standoffish attitude. So the Secret Service outside the door would have been no match for Elle, but she chose to sit there and try to reason with him. Even after all his research, he still did not know Elle. She was not the girl who came into his shop with a broken watch, nor was she the sociopath described in her files. She truly thought of herself as some kind of freedom fighter, and he was still fascinated by her.

Since she would not just make her escape, he decided there was something he wanted to know. He wanted to hear what she thought of him now, of what she did to him. He thought that enough time had passed and that he had changed enough to not be effected by anything she said about it, especially since it had worked out in his favor in the end. He was wrong. There was one thing that would upset him, and that was for her to say that he was nothing special, for her to not even remember what happened. How could she forget what kind of pie she made? How many of those was she giving away at the time? And that was bad enough, but then she didn't say anything, as though that was all that she could recall. He supposed that if she was really a sociopath, he should have expected that, but it upset him all the same. Then a shadow went across her face, and she stared at him. "It was peach," she said with a gulp. She went on to talk about how she did not want to remember, and Sylar realized that was all he had wanted to hear. He wanted to know that their brief encounter had at least some of the effect on her life as it had on his. From the way she stared off, it seemed like she was heavily affected by it, and Sylar was happy to see that.

She gave him an opening to ask about her psychological diagnoses, and he took it because he had yet to see any evidence of them. He had expected her to initially deny that there was anything wrong with her, but he was glad that she did not. She did not come right out and say that she was a sociopath, but she admitted to being troubled, to killing without remorse, and that was close enough. For a second, she almost talked about him. "But Sylar, he was different." Then she stopped herself, saying that wasn't the point. She went on to talk about losing sleep over the four million that Sylar never actually killed, but Sylar wanted her to go back. "Sylar is exactly the point. I brought you here to talk about him."

Elle narrowed her eyes, like she was trying to figure something out. "But whether or not I felt remorse has nothing to do with how he became who he was. It wouldn't tell you how to spot or stop or neutralize the next one who comes along. And why would I want to help you with that anyway? I'm not sure that I trust your definition of dangerous."

She made a good point. How she felt about what happened did not matter for his stated purposes. There was no reason for Nathan to push, but Sylar needed to know. He was used to getting what he wanted, to taking what he wanted. And right now, he wanted to hear what she felt. Seeing Elle and being around her was strange. He had only known her and liked her as Gabriel, which was not who he was anymore. She had only betrayed Gabriel, clearing the way for Sylar to become great. He could not really put his finger on any reason why he should want to hear her express remorse and regret for helping him along this path. He did not care what Bennet or anyone else from the Company had to say, but with Elle, it was different. "As you pointed out before, I have all the power here. You're a prisoner right now. And you are one of the dangerous ones, by any definition. From here, you are going to a maximum security prison that will be equipped to deal with you, even if we have to keep you constantly doused in water. You might want to think about cooperating."

She made a breathy sound that was somewhere between a laugh and a gasp. She shook her head for a while. "Okay, I don't know why it matters, but... You know, I didn't meet a lot of guys. If you read the files, then you know that I was kept confined to the facility. And even when they finally let me out, it was only for work, and then I went right back to my cell—I mean, room." It sounded like she made that slip intentionally. "Even to this day, I don't think I've ever actually been on a date, unless you count--"

She stopped, leaving Sylar wondering what her closest experience to a date was. He could not stop a voice in his head from say that he had made her dinner, shouldn't that count? He knew that it did not. He had thought of it as a date at the time; they even made plans for another date. He thought she was becoming his girlfriend, but then Trevor showed up, and by the end of the night, it was clear that he was wrong about all of that. He prompted her to finish her thought. "What?"

"Nothing." Her eyes went wide. "That isn't about Sylar at all. That's... I'm totally off topic. I felt bad about Sylar." She used her hand to demonstrate the simplicity of that response. "That's really all you wanted to know. And it wasn't because he killed four million people. It's because I believe that he was a good man, even if he had killed Brian Davis. He was trying to change, trying to be... When I destroyed that life, I felt a lot of remorse."

That was not all that Sylar wanted to know. Everything she said made him want to know more. "But why? Shouldn't you feel more guilt over the people you actually killed yourself, not the four million you had nothing to do with? Why was Sylar different?"

Elle's mouth spread into a slow smile. "I have a theory. I don't think you want to know about Sylar at all. I think you're doing some kind of profile on me. I've talked to enough shrinks to know when I'm being analyzed." She did not wait for him to confirm or deny that. "He was different because I _liked_ him. How hard is that to figure out? All that talk about how I don't meet a lot of men and I've never been on a date, you couldn't see where I was going with that?"

Sylar had seen that, but he did not want to assume. He needed to hear it from her own mouth, and now that he had, he realized that he had opened a can of worms. He never should have pushed her to say that. It was better when he thought that she had used him, better to think that she was a sociopath who never cared at all. Gabriel was gone forever, and knowing that she liked him did not change that. What was the purpose of getting her to make that so explicit? He clearly saw what he should have done, which was to emphasize how horrendous and unbearable prison would be until she made her escape and then find her and kill her without giving her a chance to speak.

He worried that these thoughts showed on his face. Over two years before, Sylar had stepped seamlessly into Nathan's life and never faltered. But now, with Elle, he was faltering. He could do a nearly flawless impression of Nathan, fooling Nathan's own wife and children, but faced with Elle, he was having trouble keeping himself far enough beneath the surface. She was the only living person who knew him as well as she did, and he should have taken that into account much earlier. He determined that he needed to move away from the topic of himself and her feelings for him, such as they were. "So you're clearly still passionate about this cause of yours. Why did you give up your terrorist campaign?"

She thought about that for a while, like she really needed time to remember. "Well, Peter took up with a stripper. And that was the end of us. I didn't stop caring about the movement, per se, but it just was not worth it anymore."

Sylar wanted to make sure he was hearing that right. "Because of... Peter?"

"No." She chuckled. "Oh, that must have made me sound horrible. Although, you've read the files. No, it wasn't because of the stripper. I was tired and... free, at least for the moment. It wasn't doing any good, and it wasn't worth putting myself on Homeland Security's radar. Now that I'm here, I can talk about martyring myself. All that 'go ahead and lock me up' talk. But I don't want to be a martyr, because no one is going to care. They're not even going to know," she said sadly. "I think the only reason I ever got involved was because I played a part in all of this too. By making him into a bomb, I caused these laws. And I let that guilt get in the way of my sense of self-preservation. And then there was the stripper, who has a name. And it all came together, and I was done. I needed to get out of the game before I lost anything really important. I'm just looking out for myself now."

She was dancing around this Peter thing, and that frustrated Sylar. Apparently they had never been on a date, but he still wanted to know the whole story. However, he had already seen the trouble that his questions got him into, and he was not going to ask this time. No, he needed to find a way to renew that instinct of self-preservation. "The people who brought you in said that you were caught while associating with known sympathizers."

She considered that for a moment. "You mean my friends? The only people in the world who know who I really am? It had nothing to do with the rebellion efforts. I was just looking for some help."

Sylar smiled broadly, Nathan's political promises smile. "I can help you, Elle." He pushed off from the desk and squatted in front of where she was sitting. "I can offer you all the protection in the world. And all you have to do is keep looking out for yourself."

"You want me to be a spy?" She shook her head, amused. "I can't believe I was right about that. Who specifically do you want me to betray?"

For Sylar, it was not about the actual spying. He just wanted a reason to help her with her escape, so that he could have the option of killing her later. "I want the big ones, Elle, the people you were working with in the beginning, the ones who haven't given up the fight. And I want to know the names of those sympathizers that Parkman refuses to give me." Without Parkman ever saying a word, Sylar knew his informant was Bennet, but he needed something to ask of her to make it look real.

She considered him shrewdly, and Sylar wondered if it was really going to be that easy. Finally, she said, "What's to stop me from running off the second you let me go and going to Peter for help staying away from you?"

Sylar could have pointed out that she had not run away yet, but he had other things on his mind. "Really? You would go to Peter, even though he dumped you for a stripper?"

Elle clenched her jaw for a second. "He didn't dump me," she said with a tight smile. "We weren't dating. We just slept together from time to time, just warm bodies. And the stripper... She's more mature than me. She had a kid; she'd been married before. I hardly had a life before I met Perter. I was like a petulant child. And I know that I annoyed him and frustrated him." She sounded very bitter, in a way Sylar was not sure he liked. "But I have matured over the last few years. I'm not acting like a petulant child now, right? And it's not about him, getting him back. It's just... I'm never what guys want. I'm good for a quick tumble in the sheets, and that's all. Except with Gabriel." Her face softened. "He treated me like I was the most incredible woman he had ever met, like he was _lucky_ I walked into his shop that night. And we both know that he was so, so wrong about that, but no other guy ever looked at me like that. No one, no one at all, was ever happy to see me, except Gabriel. And look what I did to him."

The second she started to talk about him, Sylar knew that he was not going to want to hear what she had to say just then. He got the story of what happened between her and Peter, and he should have stopped her with that. This was so much more than her just saying that she liked him, that she felt bad about destroying him. This felt like a moment when he could just tell her who he was and that he did feel lucky, despite everything, and all might be forgiven. And those were crazy thoughts. He had worked so hard to achieve what he had. The power was so much more important to him than Elle. Power was all he ever wanted, and now he had plenty of it. It would be stupid to throw all of that away on someone like Elle, a fickle, unstable sociopath who had already hurt him once before. He was so close to her, thighs starting to burn from squatting. He wanted so much to reach out and wrapped his hands around her neck. Then he would either kiss her or kill her, rip off her clothes or cut off the top of her head. Or both. He knew that he could not do either, that he needed to stick to the plan, and yet he asked a question that's only purpose was to help him decide. "Then why did you do it?"

She looked back at him with tears pooling in those big blue eyes. Then she shook her head and smiled wryly. "What else was I going to do?"

Alternatives came quickly and easily to Sylar's mind, but he pushed them away. He stood and focused on the task at hand. "You did it for the Company, for those same people you're protecting now. If you had been looking out for yourself back then, none of this would have happened. You're on the wrong side, Elle."

The way she looked back at him, it seemed that he was getting through to her. He could almost see the assent forming on her lips. Instead she asked, "What's going to happened to us when you get what you want? Me and Parkman and the Haitian? What's going to happen to the traitors when this is all over? You're just going to kill us, right?"

That was always the plan. The accuracy of her foresight startled Sylar, and for a moment he forgot that it was only his plan. Nathan had to say an emphatic no to that. He stood. "I don't kill people, Elle."

She gave a doubtful shrug. "Still, once you have all the others in custody, you aren't just going to let us live freely. We're dangerous, much more so than others."

A rational, skeptical Elle was not really suiting Sylar's purposes, and he found himself cursing that maturity she had found. Now he needed to find a way to rationalize letting them go free, which he had no intention of doing. "Parkman can read minds. It's dangerous in its way, but it's not like he can hurt anyone with it. And the Haitian blocks abilities. If there are only three or four of you out there, it won't much matter."

Elle shook her head, like she was not that easily fooled. "The Haitian erases memories, and if you think Parkman isn't dangerous, you obviously did not know his father. But I don't care about them. _I'm_ dangerous, by any definition, right? Where's my insurance policy?"

Sylar glanced at the door. This had gone on long enough. "Why should you get an insurance policy? You're a terrorist, Elle. You just confessed to staging prison breaks. Let me break down your options for you. Door number one: you go straight to prison. Door number two: I fit you with a tracking device and you fake an escape. I'm the one taking the risk here. I'm the one who can't trust you. You have nothing to lose at this point."

--

Elle looked behind her at the same door Nathan had just glanced at. There were armed Secret Service agents outside that door. She would have to be crazy to attempt an escape right then, even if Nathan was complicit. With an attempt at any later stage, she might not need his help and she would be better off without a tracking device. And yet, she could not really choose prison when she had just said that she did not want to be a martyr. "What kind of tracking device?"

He went around the desk and pulled a pneumatic needle gun out of a drawer. "I assume you are familiar with the radioisotope the Company used."

That was a method she was very familiar with. She felt her neck, where the black marks would be if she had ever been given the injection. If she let him do this, she would be trapped. There was no way to remove or destroy it. If she got the injection, there would be no place for her to hide. "You can't mark me like that," she said as calmly as possible. "If any of them see it, they'll know that you can find me anywhere and it won't be safe to have me around. I'll be blacklisted, if not as a spy, then as a liability. That injection will make me useless to you."

He approached with that needle as though nothing she said had made a difference. "It doesn't have to be at your neck. We'll just do it on the upper back, and then all you have to do is keep your shirt on."

That statement distracted Elle from her fear of being trapped. It seemed incongruous for Nathan. She almost asked him what if she needed to sleep with someone for information, but something in the way he said it told her it was not the right time to play with him like that. She had a theory about why she was really there, a theory that was panning out much better than the Sylar one had, but that paranoia crept up on her again. She pushed it down. He may not be Sylar—he _could_ not be Sylar—but he was far too interested in her personal life. She could try to stall further, but all that would do is tell him how reluctant she was to help. She peeled off her shirt, partly to see Nathan's reaction, and leaned forward. "All right then."

Nathan's eyes lingered for a second on her bare skin, but that did not necessarily mean anything. Then he placed the injector gun between her shoulder blades and shot the isotope into her back. It was mildly painful, but the reason Elle sucked in her breath through her teeth had more to so with the knowledge that she was forever marked. She sat up and put her shirt back on. "So are you going to give me money to live on while I'm a fugitive?"

"No. You'll live off whatever you were living off before." Nathan leaned against the desk again, setting the gun down behind him. "Maybe I should paint a clearer picture for you of what prison is going to be like. It seems to me that you aren't scared enough."

Elle had a perfect understanding of why she did not want to go to prison, and she was plenty scared of losing her freedom. She did not think she had been hiding that well, but if she had, it was purely her training. In fact, Nathan should be more concerned if she was showing fear because that would mean that she had a plan. However, it occurred to her that maybe she was not as scared of the actual idea of prison as another person would be. "I grew up in a prison. What, you're going to keep me doused in water? That's supposed to scare me? I want to be free, but if I have to go to prison? Well, I've survived worse."

Nathan raised his eyebrows and nodded. "You certainly have. After all, it's not like we're going to be doing experiments on you."

"Right." Elle had no idea why he would say that. She thought that maybe he was being sarcastic. "Wait, do you do experiments on the inmates?" None of the escapees she talked to had mentioned that, but she had not spoken to one in years. Things may have changed since she gave up the fight.

He shook his head, slightly confused. "No, I was referring to your father. The experiments he did on you."

Elle did not know what he was talking about. He said it with such authority, like it was a fact, but her father had done no such thing. "What?"

He looked at her for a second as though he thought she was playing him. Then, with slightly jerky movements, he went into his desk and emerged with a thick folder, which he handed to her. "You know, the experiments."

Keeping eye contact with Nathan, Elle opened the file to somewhere in the middle. It took her a second to gather the courage to look down at the page. When she finally did, she saw words like "subject" and "electrical discharges." Okay, she was not the only one with that ability. That report, dated 1993, went on for three pages, and Elle read every word looking for something that would tell her that she was not the subject in question. Instead, she found her name. She could feel Nathan staring at her, watching her reaction. She hated him so much in that moment, hated that he was witnessing this. She turned to the first page. It was 1989, and her name was all over the place. "These aren't real." Her voice came out in a whisper and lacked the conviction she had meant to convey.

"Yeah, Elle, they are. They were all in your father's computer. It took some time to recover them, but I assure that they're real."

"No, _Nathan,_ they aren't." She thought about throwing it at him, but she did not want him to have it. She could not even look at him, so she continued to stare at the page. "You had these done up to look real to make me want to cooperate. You're just... trying to..." Her head felt like it was going to explode. "...make me hate them so that I'll stop protecting them. You're manipulating me, so that I'll track down the founders for you."

Nathan paused for a moment, like he was not sure whether he should say the next thing. "I don't need you to do that. I already have your father in prison. And I have Kaito and Maury. I'm doing fine with the founders. I just don't broadcast it because of the martyr effect. Why would I—How can you not remember something like that?"

Elle looked at the date on the first page. She tried to remember where she was in 1989. She was six then. She realized that she could not remember anything, _anything,_ that happened after she burned down her grandmother's house. She took a deep breath. "The Haitian." She finally looked Nathan in the eye. "I want to talk to the Haitian."

Nathan nodded. "I can arrange that meeting for you. I just need you to do something for me first, a showing of good faith."

"You're a bastard." The words slipped out before Elle could stop herself. Even if he had faked these documents and was now keeping her from the one person who could tell her that, there was no point in being rude. She needed to at least pretend to be cooperative. She plastered an obviously fake smile on her face. "Who do you want?"

He shrugged. "Whoever you can get. Surprise me."

Elle did not trust Nathan for a second, and she did not need him or the Haitian to find out the truth. She could think of people on the outside who would know, one person in particular. All she needed right then was to escape. It was now or never. "Okay." She stood, stuffing the folder into the back of her pants and covering it with her shirt. "How are we going to do this?"


	4. Part Three: On the Run

**Author's Note:** So I think I'm done with writing it, and now there's no point in really drawing out the updates. Except suspense.

–

–

_How many deaths will it take 'til he knows that too many people have died?—_Bob Dylan

–

**Part Three—On the Run**

Nathan went behind Elle and pulled her arms behind her back. "I'll put the restraints back on you, and you'll escape in transit."

He wrapped her hands in the thick chains, and Elle thought that maybe she had misunderstood him. "You mean that they're going to let me go in transit so that it doesn't look suspicious, right?"

"No, I mean you're going to escape." He pressed a key into her hand. "Just keep your hands closed together. They won't check; they wouldn't risk touching you."

Elle was suspicious again. She turned around to look at Nathan's face. "So, are you going to be the only person who... Do you understand that if they don't know to let me go, I'll probably have to kill them?"

Nathan kind of shrugged. "Try not to."

He did not seem worried about those men's lives at all, since they could so easily be spared. She had a feeling that, in coming up with this plan, he was perfectly aware of what she would do to her captors, and he would have preferred if she had just not brought it up. "They'll have guns. I won't have a choice."

He sighed. "Elle, do you know how many men died in Hiro Nakamura's raid on the National Science Center in Raleigh last year? I don't want to know the details of what you do, but bringing down people like Nakamura is worth a certain amount of sacrifice."

Elle nodded. "Oh, okay," she said in a slightly sarcastic tone. "Yeah, you're just breaking eggs to make an omelet. Just so we're clear, how many eggs is too many?"

Nathan licked his lips with a smile. "Thirty-eight men at the National Science Center. Four _million_ New Yorkers. Those were too many eggs."

It was amazing to Elle that he could stand there and say that everything he did was for the good of his country. _His_ country, not hers. Maybe he really believed that this was all necessary to protect the American people. Or maybe he thought that since she was herself insane, she would not notice the sheer insanity of his justifications.

He put his hands on her shoulders. "You need to stop thinking of me as the enemy. Especially since I'm letting you go."

That was a good point. She did not want him to change his mind and take back the key. He was still the enemy, and she was still going to work against him, but she needed to be out of prison to do that. "I'll do what you want, Nathan. Bring on the guards; I don't mind killing people. I just thought you might have a problem with it."

Nathan rolled his eyes, which seemed uncharacteristic, but she did not know him that well. He went back to his desk and pushed a button. The next thing Elle knew, she was surrounded by Secret Service agents, and she was being walked down some back hallway. When she was handed over to Homeland Security, she was not surprised to see that neither Parkman nor the Haitian were there. Nathan couldn't have her killing the useful ones, after all.

There were three agents, just for little, old her. It was kind of flattering. Two sat in the front of the van, and the third sat in the back with her. Metal all around; that could get dicey. When everyone was settled, and the van was moving, the agent in the back asked her why the President wanted to see her. She shrugged. "I guess you'll have to ask Nathan about that."

He frowned. "It's President Petrelli to you."

Elle smiled. "No, it's President Petrelli to _you_." She started to shift around to try to get the key into a more manageable position. "We're lovers."

The agent snorted at that. "Looks like he's not that interested in you anymore. Stop fidgeting."

She did not stop. "I'm sorry, it's just that these chains are really uncomfortable. I've been locked up in them for... like fourteen hours." She checked the clock and did the math after the fact. She realized that it was more like ten hours. She had been picked up at her motel in Texas at four in the morning, spent a couple hours locked up in a facility there, flew to Washington, and was taken directly to the President. Now it was two. She had thought her estimate would be low. The time was dragging.

He pulled out his gun and pointed it at her. "It's supposed to be uncomfortable. Now, stop it."

Even though she thought that was an empty threat, Elle did as he said. She had the key between her fingers now anyway. After a minute, the agent laid the gun down on his lap. That meant the safety was on. Elle looked from the gun to his face. "You know I'm not the first one of his lovers he's put in prison. He had an affair with a woman named Niki Sanders, and then he--" She clicked her tongue. "--locked her up." She shifted just a little bit to get the key into the lock. "We even kind of look alike. Same coloring. Of course, she's a stripper, more flexible."

The agent was a little distracted, which was what Elle was going for. She looked out the front window, the only one she could see out of. If they took her to the same airport she flew into, there would be a stretch of road with no traffic or buildings. They were not quite there yet. She needed to make some noise to cover up the sound of her turning the key. "Nathan wanted to talk about his" _Click_ "brother. He thought I might know something."

"Ah, so no Monica Lewinsky escapades in the Oval Office?" He was teasing her. She could tell that he still did not believe her story about the President taking a terrorist as his lover, which he was right to doubt.

They were getting closer. Elle wrinkled her nose. "I was, like, twelve when that happened. But, uh, you can imagine us doing whatever you want." She ran her tongue over her teeth. "Just remember that I was chained up the whole time."

Now he really was distracted. Men were so easy, Elle reflected. She pulled on the chains a little to see how much noise they would make. It was a fair amount. The agent broke out of his thoughts. "What was that?"

Elle shrugged. "It sounded like it came from under my seat. I think there might be something wrong with the van." She shot a bolt of electricity at the metal wall behind her, which made the whole van shake. Unfortunately the chains were still touching her, and they acted as a conductor, making her whole body seize. That had been the point of the chains, to be a deterrent, to make using her ability more painful for her than her guards. She was aware of the risks of shooting electricity and planned to use that to work for her. "Oh, god, it's electrical!"

The agent in the back with her put his hand on his gun as the van started to slow. All she needed was for them to get down to a speed where she could survive a crash. The driver's foot was off the accelerator and that was good enough for Elle. She pulled her hands out of the loose chains quickly, killing the agent in front of her. There was no divider between her and the front seat, and those agents were dead seconds later. There may have been another way she could have gone, but Elle wanted to kill them. She had decided not to spare their lives just on the off chance that there was a possibility that Nathan would feel guilty about their deaths.

Although Elle did not have a seatbelt, the crash was not too bad at all. The van coasted to about twenty miles an hour, going off the road and bumping relatively lightly into a tree. Elle was jostled by the impact and developed a headache, but she was generally unscathed. She climbed out and adjusted the file that was digging into her back. Then she opened the driver's door to take his cell phone and dialed Peter's number from memory.

It took him a long time to answer, and when he finally did, he sounded wary. Elle did not have time for that. "Hey, Peter, it's Elle. We met in a supermarket." That was not true at all, which was why it was their code for identifying themselves to each other.

"God, Elle, I heard that you were--"

"I was, but I escaped. And now I really need you to come get me." She gave him her general coordinates, and a second later, he was there.

Elle zapped the phone with electricity, threw it on the ground, and crushed it with her heel. When she was sure the phone was no good, she held out her hand for Peter to whisk her away. They settled in Peter's place in Las Vegas, the one he now shared with the stripper. Elle meant it when she told Nathan that she did not want Peter back, but the whole situation still made her somewhat bitter. Not that Peter knew anything about that. They did not really talk about feelings.

"I'm not going to take up too much of your time. I just need some things." She went into the bedroom to find her spare driver's license and passport.

Peter followed her. "By the way, supermarket is not two words."

Those were the rules. It had to be a two word place, and it had to be something different every time. "Yes, it is," Elle said as she opened his bureau drawer to find his underwear on one side and Niki's on the other. "Super and market. Two words." She lifted up the false bottom and pulled out a pile of fake ids. She spread them out on the bed.

Peter picked out the license for "Ellen Knight" immediately. "I'm sorry about sending you to Noah. I thought it would be safe."

Elle did not know why, but she did not want to tell Peter the truth about Bennet's betrayal. "It probably was. I think it was Hana; she never liked me."

Peter laughed at that and handed her her passport. "How is it that you make enemies everywhere you go?"

Elle shrugged. "It's just women. Men seem to like me just fine." She walked backward out of the room. "Okay, thanks for these and the rescue. I'm going to go make some non-Bennet arrangements. Do you happen to have any credit cards for her?" Elle held up the driver's license.

Peter directed her to the kitchen. "If I do, it's probably been canceled." He reached through the wall to pull out numerous cards. Then he scanned them quickly and handed her two, one of which Elle knew was still good. "I can just take you wherever you're going."

Elle looked around, thinking about the past. She knew that the break-up, which consisted of nothing more or less than the cessation of sex, was her fault. She was the one who wanted to stop. She did not begrudge Peter his happiness with the strip—Niki. She was just a little bitter about how easily he fell in love with someone else, when he had never fallen in love with her. They could be friends; they were great at friendship, but only as long as they did not spend too much time together. She shook her head. "I'm not even sure what my first stop is going to be," she lied. "I'm just going to get a car and drive."

After that, Peter let her go easily, which Elle supposed was another thing. It had always been easy for him to let her go, but then again, it had always been pretty easy for her to leave. Her bitterness probably came less from anything Peter had done and more from the fact that she had this great guy, and she could not make it work. Now Peter was happy with Niki, while the only man Elle ever really cared about was dead, because of something she did.

Elle took a cab to a national rental agency. That was the great thing about a place like Las Vegas. Even in these troubled times, no one looked too closely or asked questions. If she needed a rental car for an indeterminable amount of time to be returned at an unknown branch, all they wanted was her driver's license, a credit card, and more money for letting her take it out of state.

Elle had known all the way back in Nathan's office that her first real stop would be Texas. In the car, she finally pulled the file out of her pants and threw it on the seat beside her. If those reports were real, Noah Bennet would know.

–

She drove through the night, stopping for coffee about every hour or so. She did not want to have to wait any longer than necessary to get her answers. Finally, eyes burning from false alertness, Elle pulled up outside the same office where she had been just a couple days before. She needed to make this quick. She could not give Bennet any time to call Homeland Security again.

She walked through the front door, file in hand. It was early, and Noah was alone in the office, sitting at his desk. He seemed alarmed to see her. It did not surprise her that her escape had not made the news, since her arrest hadn't either. He reached for his gun, but Elle did not even look at that. She slammed the file down on the desk. "Don't worry, Noah. I'm not here to kill you. I just want to know about these."

Hesitantly, and with his hand still on his gun, Noah leaned forward to look at the pages in front of him. Once he realized what they were, he became engrossed and forgot the gun. "Where did you get these?"

Elle wanted to tell him that he did not get to ask questions because he was a liar and a traitor. "Are they real?" The way he looked at them gave her the answer.

He raised his head. "I had nothing to do with this." He flipped to the front. "I didn't even work there in 1989."

She just wanted him to give her a straight answer to her question. She needed to hear it in a definitive way. "Are they real?" she repeated, emphasizing every word.

"Yes." He looked slightly ashamed, which was not something she had ever expected from him, especially if he had nothing to do with it. "I did see some of these experiments. I knew about them. I was there a couple times when the Haitian--"

Elle did not want to hear any more. She gathered up the file. "Okay, that's all I wanted to know."

Noah put his hand over the file to stop her from picking it up. "How did you get away?"

She yanked the file away. "I escaped. I'm very good at what I do. You should know that, Noah; you trained me."

He appraised her coolly. "So they took you into interrogation and showed you that. Why?"

Elle probably should have thought this through better. She had to go with the first thing that came to her. "They wanted to know about Sylar. The President's afraid there's another one coming." She was not sure what that had to do with the file.

Bennet nodded, still wary of her. "I think you should go now, Elle."

Elle was happy to leave. She wanted to remind him that he was the traitor, not her, but she had a mark on her back to suggest differently. Remembering that mark made her rethink her feelings about Bennet's loyalty. She stopped at the door. "By the way, I understand why you did it. Turning me in was probably the right choice. We both have our own ways of helping evolved humans. I won't get in your way, if you don't get in mine."

–

Elle drove a few more hours out of West Texas. When she got to Dallas, she stopped at a motel and crashed, sleeping for the rest of the day and night. In the morning, she was ready to finally go home. She chose to take an airplane the rest of the way.

Elle, or rather Ellen Knight, lived outside of Chicago. She had used a different fake name to get to Texas, which was wise in hindsight. Her neighbors might be suspicious about her sympathies, but at least this identity had not been burned yet. Since she had been relieved of all of her personal property at that first holding facility, Elle was forced to go to one of her neighbors for the spare key. That involved a lengthy conversation about where she had been and how she had lost her keys. When the woman was satisfied by her answers, which took quite a long time, she handed over the key.

It felt good to be home, but Elle knew that she could not stay there for long. She needed to start a new life as someone Peter, Hiro, and all the others had never heard of. There may be no way for her to hide form Nathan or the government now, but she was not going to bring the rest of the rebellion down with her. It would probably be easy to explain to them that she had been injected with the isotope, so they should stay away. But the problem was that no one used that isotope anymore. That was not how the government tracked the ones who were captured. That was purely from the Company, and that would lead to questions about Nathan that she did not want to answer. She did not want to give those people the slightest indication that she might have traded her freedom for theirs. Bennet probably suspected, but he would not say anything, since he had his own secrets to keep.

–

As far as Sylar was concerned, there was only one really bad thing about being President. Everyone was always watching. Generally, it did not matter to him if his every move was monitored, but when he had an ability to get, he wished it was easier to slip away from the public eye. Because of the unique nature of his job, it was even a risk to do his hunting at night. If something happened, some matter of national security, his absence would be discovered, and he would have no explanation. It was hard enough to get away without his wife noticing.

Of course, Sylar did not allow any of that to stop him from getting abilities. He was just careful about when he sought out his victims. He knew everywhere Elle went. Las Vegas, Peter. Odessa, Noah. Then she settled in Chicago. Maybe that was where Hiro was, maybe not, but he knew that she would not stay there for long.

Now that Elle was not right in front of his face, it was easier for Sylar to be objective. Nothing she had said mattered at all. That was all a long time ago, and there were much more important things in Sylar's life now. He would go to Chicago, kill her, and be back in a couple hours. This was no different than any other time. A brief flirtation five years before did not make her ability any different than anyone else's.

Sylar never flew as Nathan; that would be stupid. Usually, when he entered the home of a target, he did not bother to change his appearance from whatever disguise he was using. When he landed in Chicago that night, however, he did put on the facade of Nathan. He was not sure why. Since it was the middle of the night, she would probably be asleep, and he was just going to kill her immediately.

Without knocking, Sylar opened the door to the sound of strange whirling noises. He found that Elle was not asleep, which he had already guessed because of the light and the noise. Instead she was shredding pages of something. Her back was to him, and she did not even hear the door open over the sound of the shredder. She would be so easy to kill right then, and the one thing Sylar had been determined not to do was ask questions or give her any opportunity to speak. He slammed the door shut. "What are you doing?"

Elle turned around, surprised. She looked even more surprised when she saw who it was. "That door was locked."

Sylar had used an ability, specifically phasing, but he did not miss a beat. "I learned how to pick a lock in the Navy."

She still looked confused. "Okay, but why would you... want to?" She shook her head. "I was just destroying any evidence that Ellen Knight ever existed."

Sylar wanted to parrot her question back at her, but he took a step forward and saw that she was really shredding the reports he had given her. "I thought you wanted to ask the Haitian about those."

Elle sent a few more sheets down the chute. "That's not necessary anymore. I found out what I needed to know."

That probably explained her stop in Texas. Sylar had assumed that she just killed Bennet for turning her in, but it made sense that she would ask about the experiments first. "Did you kill Bennet?"

Elle smiled and refrained from answering for a moment. "No." She turned back to her shredder. "But don't worry. This does not change how I feel about helping you."

When Sylar brought up the experiments, he had really thought that Elle knew about them. He had never considered that those memories would have been taken from her. He was not sure whether that made Bob Bishop a slightly better or worse father than Sylar already thought he was. He had not given her the reports to coerce her into helping, and he was not trying to turn her loyalty away from the founders. It was not any evil plan on his part. He just thought she knew and that the reports would help her remember. When he considered what she said now, he was positive that she had never intended to help him, which Sylar actually respected a little. That was the first time it really registered for him that he was letting her talk. Once again, she was an easy target with her back to him. He raised his hand slightly. "What would be the purpose of destroying the evidence of Ellen Knight when I can find you anywhere, regardless of your name?"

She looked at him and shrugged. Sylar knew the purpose; it was to protect the rest of them. He wanted to hear her say it though. "Is it so that _they_ can't find you, the people who know who Ellen Knight really is?"

Elle bit her lip. "Just because I'm trapped, it doesn't mean I have to take the rest of them down with me."

He found her maddening. It was like she was not even listening to him. "God, Elle, you wouldn't be trapped if you would just cooperate. Don't worry about them, protect yourself."

"That's..." Elle came a few steps closer. "That's kind of a strange thing for you to say. I mean, we were revolutionaries, and it was like a war. Didn't the Navy teach you anything about camaraderie? You know, esprit de corps, honor, loyalty? Or was it all petty theft?"

Sylar did not even know how to respond to that. "I'm just trying to help you, Elle."

She nodded with a big smile on her face. "Oh, I know. I get that." She took another step, and they were practically touching. "And that's strange in it's own way. I also get the sense that you were a little jealous when you realized that I slept with your brother." She put her hand on his chest. "Why are you here, Nathan?"

Sylar looked down. The assumptions she was making were completely wrong. This would be another good time for him to tell her, or rather show her, the real reason he came to her apartment. But he didn't. "I just came to talk."

"Mm-hmm." She moved her hands down to unbutton his jacket.

When she tried to push the jacket off his shoulders, he shrugged it back on. "I'm married."

She laughed at that and pulled at his tie. "Come on, Nathan. I used to work for Linderman. I know you haven't been entirely faithful to your wife."

Actually, for the last two years, Sylar had been faithful to Nathan's wife, a woman he had absolutely no interest in. He did not have anything against Heidi, but she was not really his type. It had been a long time since he was interested women at all really. After becoming Sylar, he was only interested in power. He did what he had to to keep Heidi from suspecting anything, but romance and sex were just distractions from the real goal. As Elle tugged on the loosened tie to bring his head down to her level, he told himself that _she_ was only a distraction. He turned his head away from her and extracted his tie from her hand. "Elle, you're a terrorist."

She went back to tracing her hand over his chest. "Yeah, well, there's my insurance policy."

Sylar realized something else right then. There was a difference between Elle trying to sleep with him and her trying to sleep with Nathan. Generally, Sylar thought of himself as Nathan. He was the only Nathan Petrelli there was anymore, and Nathan's was the only life he had. It was better not to make a distinction. But with Elle, there was a clear distinction in his mind. He did not like her trying to sleep with Nathan. He knew that she had been with other guys in the last five years, Peter if no one else, but sleeping with Nathan, a man she clearly hated, to keep out of prison? That was not how he wanted to see her. He sidestepped her and went deeper into the apartment. He still had not killed her.

Elle turned around with her hands on her hips. "Why don't you just say it?"

Sylar searched his mind for what she might want him to say, but nothing came to him. "What?"

Elle scoffed and and shook her head. After a few seconds, she said, "Okay, I might be crazy—I am crazy, but... I think you're Sylar."

--

--

**Author's Note:** Yeah, that kind of suspense.


	5. Part Four: Certain Death

**Author's Note:** I'm intentionally vague on how he survived the bomb and whether he actually can heal at this time. (Although it's my personal belief that no, he can't.)

–

–

_Love grows in me like a tumor, parasite bent on devouring its host_—Jenny Owen Youngs

–

**Part Four—Certain Death**

The second Nathan Petrelli showed up in her apartment, at one in the morning, with his lock-picking skills, that old paranoia crept back into Elle's head. Then, he did not defend the Navy. Elle knew several ex-soldiers, both at the Company and afterwards, and Nathan would have defended the Navy. More than that, he would have lectured her about how she did not know anything about esprit de corps or the kind of bond that comes from serving in a unit with someone. Of course, he would only do that if he had actually been in the Navy. But she did not accuse him then. She was willing to acknowledge that there may be differences between the men she knew and Nathan. For one thing, most of them were not officers. She did not know if that changed things much, if officers were more removed from their men, but really the bigger difference was that Nathan had never seen battle.

It was really flimsy evidence, as was the flicker of anger when she said the wrong pie. All those little things were compounding. Either way, whoever he was, him showing up like this, wanting to help her stay out of prison was indicative of other motives. She tried out that theory, but it did not work out the way she wanted.

She did not want to wait anymore. She did not want to wade through the tiny inconsistencies. She just wanted to get to the truth. She made the accusation just to see how he would react. If he was really Nathan, that should become obvious fairly quickly. So she just said it. "I think you're Sylar." He looked surprised, maybe a little alarmed. It was not enough to tell her anything. It was still just suggestive. She pushed a little harder. "And if you don't want to sleep with me, then you're here to kill me. So just say it."

Nathan shook his head, regaining his flawless composure. "That's ridiculous. Sylar is dead."

Elle shrugged. "Someone's dead." She thought about what else she could say to expedite this. "I didn't know Nathan, but I knew Gabriel. I loved Gabriel. I think I can recognize him."

There was something, but it still was not big enough. "You didn't know him." he said gently. "You never even went on a date with him. It was a week, during a very difficult time in his life, a transitional time. That's not enough to think that you knew him." He looked at her with pity. "This is kind of crazy, Elle. Maybe you should... Maybe you should see someone about this."

The trouble was that she was not sure that he was wrong. Maybe she was losing it. Being captured and chained up was stressful; learning about the experiments was stressful, and the psychologists had always said that she should not be put in stressful situations. She was really doubting herself, but she was not going to let that show. She could not back down now. "Oh, for god's sake, just admit it, Gabriel."

"Gabriel is dead," he snapped. "You killed him."

That was more than a flicker. Elle smiled. She was so glad that she was not crazy, not suffering from paranoid delusions, at least not at the moment. "Well, that's all the confirmation I need right there."

Nathan—Sylar in Nathan's body—stared at her for a long time. "I don't know what you think I said, but... I'm not Sylar. I'm Nathan Petrelli. And we've never met before, so it's just insane for you to think--"

Elle cut him off. "If we've never met, why are you so familiar with me? You probably don't even realize how you say my name. If you don't know me and you don't want me, why does it bother you so much that I slept with Peter?"

"It doesn't."

Elle was not done. "If you don't know me as anything other than a terrorist, why do you want to help me?"

He had an answer for that one. "I want to help you so that you'll help me. Because you're selfish, and you'll do anything to protect yourself. You have training; you're entrenched. That's all you are to me, Elle. Or Miss Bishop, or whatever you want me to call you. You are a means to an end, an egg for my omelet."

Elle took all of that in, nodding. "Okay. And how did I kill Gabriel?"

He only took a moment's hesitation. "It's your fault he was the bomb."

Elle knew what Sylar would mean by saying that she killed Gabriel, and it had nothing to do with the bomb. The way she killed Gabriel was something worse, more personal and direct. Still, it felt like a low blow because he knew how she felt about those four million deaths. "You wouldn't say that if you were Nathan," she said slowly. "You wouldn't say that I killed Gabriel by putting him on that path if you thought I was going insane. That would only push me further over the edge, and if I have a psychotic break, Nathan can't defend himself against me. You would only say it if I was getting too close to the truth and you wanted to hurt me."

He looked at her like he was repeating her convoluted logic in his mind. Then he sighed and cracked his neck. Reality pushed out around him, and all of a sudden, he was Sylar. "Fine, before I kill you, let's talk about how you _loved_ me."

Elle was mesmerized by the sight of him. She already knew that she was right about his identity, but actually seeing Sylar took that to a whole new level. She reached out and touched his face, the face that had been in all of those pictures, the face that had sparked so much fear of evolved humans, the face of the man whose soul she destroyed. "I just said that so that you'd admit who you were."

He pushed her hand away from his face. "Oh, that's right, I forgot. That's what you do; you _lie_ to get what you want."

Elle knew that he was going to kill her soon. She wanted to ask him for a favor first. She just wanted him to look at her the way Gabriel had, one last time, but it did not seem like the right time to ask. "I'm sorry, _Mr. President_, I didn't realize you'd have a problem with that."

She could see that he was angry. He hated her. Elle could not bring herself to feel the same about him. She could hate Nathan; she had hated him for a long time, but she could never hate Sylar, not after what she did to him. He was seething, and she just waited for the explosion, waited to die. It seemed right, poetic, unavoidable. It was her time.

The silence stretched out between them. With no warning, Sylar's arm shot out. She winced when he grabbed the back of her neck, anticipating the pain. Instead he pulled her close and kissed her fiercely, which was really the last thing she expected him to do. She pushed on his chest until he stopped. "I don't understand," she said, trying to catch her breath. "You could have done that before and not blown your cover."

He pulled at his loose tie, taking it off in a way that was reminiscent of the noose, and threw it behind him. He shook his head as he unbuttoned the top button of his shirt. "Then you would have been having sex with Nathan."

Elle only vaguely understood the distinction. Either way, she would be having sex with Sylar. "Yeah, but then you wouldn't have to kill me."

He shrugged off his jacket and threw it on a chair. As he undid the cuffs on his shirt, Elle considered the possibility that he was removing his crisp, white dress shirt for a different reason than she originally thought. Maybe he just wanted to avoid getting blood on it when he killed her. Why was sex always the first place her mind went? Because he kissed you, a voice in her head answered comfortingly.

He finished unbuttoning his shirt and discarded it with the jacket, and then Sylar stood in front of her in a white t-shirt and black pants, presenting a much different image than Nathan in a suit. The smooth visage of the President was gone and there was something kind of feral and working class about him now, which Elle found very arousing. The way he looked at her, with so much hatred, Elle decided that she was right every time she made a distinction between Sylar and Gabriel. They were not the same man.

A question about Gabriel was on the tip of her tongue when Sylar finally spoke. "I'm not going to kill you yet."

That "yet" was disconcerting. All the comfort of knowing that it was her time evaporated. She took a couple steps so that she was pressed up against him again. "So, then what are you going to do first?"

He thought about the answer for a moment, staring into her eyes, lips parted. Then he took her arm roughly by the wrist and pulled her across the apartment to two closed doors. The first one he went to was for the bathroom, but Elle was so intrigued by his raw sexual aggression that she let him make that mistake. On his second try, he found the right room and threw her down perpendicular on the bed.

He was standing over her, and he still seemed to to be looking at her with so much hatred, but maybe she could not read him as well as she thought. She pulled off her own shirt and set it aside. Then she sat up a little on her elbows. "So I have to keep my shirt on around everyone except you. It's interesting how that worked out."

With a hand to the forehead, he pushed her onto her back again. He slowly unbuckled her belt, looking her in the eye. "So how much of it was a lie?" He moved to the button and zipper on her jeans. "If you recognized me, did you mean anything you said?"

There was an edge in his voice that Elle found disturbing. As he worked her jeans past her hips, the fear mixed together with her arousal, making Elle's blood run hot and cold at the same time. "Any of what? When?"

The jeans discarded, Sylar took her by the wrists, pulling her straight up to her feet. "The things you said about me in my office. How much of that was just to get me to tell you the truth?"

Elle's mind went back to the Oval Office. That had been where she initially figured it out, but she still thought of that as a conversation with Nathan. She could not remember anything she said for Sylar's benefit, except that she had stopped lying about not being able to recall what happened. She thought more about what had been said that day, trying to connect it with Sylar instead of Nathan. The repartee, the feeling that she was not what he expected, the way he had helped her escape, all of that took on new meaning now that she knew the truth. "Well, it was true that I don't like to think about what I did, but I only refused to talk about it to see how Nath—you would react. That's about it."

He grew pensive, and Elle wondered if there was something specific that he had wanted to know about. He was still holding her wrists up in front of her in an iron grip. Elle really wanted to move things along, so she said, "I think you should take off your pants now."

He looked at her with sheer contempt and let go of her wrists. "Why is always sex with you? Sex with Peter, sex with Nathan, sex with me. Is that the only thing you can think about?"

Elle grabbed the sheet off the bed and wrapped it around herself. "When a guy kisses me, drags me across the apartment, lays me on the bed, and takes off my jeans? Yes." She sat on the bed. It was ironic to Elle that he was painting her as some kind of sex fiend when she had been celibate for about three years. After leaving Peter, while she was pretending to be normal, she could not risk exposure by getting close to anyone. However, she had made that comment about only being good for sex, and god only knew what her files said about that. "So all I'm saying is if you want to, then I am ready, willing, and able." She opened the sheet to show off her underwear clad body. "And I'm really good at it. And you should get to find that out before I die. But really, Gabri—Sylar, I just wish you'd make up your mind."

He looked at her body with minimal interest. "You do realize that even if we have sex I'm just going to kill you right after?"

Elle wrapped herself back up. She understood that perfectly. "Yeah. So what's it going to be?"

Sylar raised his eyebrows and nodded. "You seem to be taking this whole death thing in stride. I expected you to at least fight it a little."

The thing was that Elle was not sure whether she really had anything left to live for. In effect, she had no friends and no family. Sure, she still had Peter, but she had to stay away from him now. She had believed that Nathan would not hurt his brother, but Nathan was no longer a factor. Her father was somewhere, in some prison if Sylar could be believed, but knowing what she now knew, she did not know if she would ever even be able to look at him again. So maybe Sylar had broken her spirit to the point that she did not mind the idea of dying so much, at least not in the abstract. She was not going to tell him that though. "Well, if a nuclear explosion couldn't stop you, I'm not sure what I can do."

His eyes were piercing. "Do you know why I want to kill you?"

Elle was pretty sure she had the gist of it. "Because you hate me. Because you want my ability. Because you can't let me live knowing what I do about who Nathan Petrelli really is."

"Well, yeah, there is all of that." He pushed her onto her back again, leaving Elle wondering which of the options he had decided on. He maybe had a slight smile on his face. If nothing else, his jaw was unclenched for the first time since he kissed her. She had no choice but to wait for his next move, and once again, the apprehension was intoxicating. He climbed onto the bed with her, which could go either way. "But there's also the fact that you do something to me. Something I can't control."

He pulled the sheet apart and brought his lip down on hers. And then Elle knew for sure what his decision was. It would only forestall the inevitable, but there were certainly worse ways to die. Maybe this would make it all up to him in some small way. She expected Sylar's hatred to come out in the sex, but it really was not like that. He was forceful, but not rough, aggressive, but not violent. He was more passionate and intense than hateful and vicious. It felt as though his desire for her transcended physicality and he just wanted to possess her in every possible way, mind, body, and soul.

When he was done with her, when he had gotten everything he wanted out of the experience, Sylar immediately got up from the bed and started to dress. "I have to get back to Washington before anyone notices that I'm gone."

Elle found it a little odd that he was even bothering to explain. She knew what this was; she knew what came next. "Okay." She lay still and waited for the cutting to begin. She was sideways on the bed with her head hanging over the edge closest to him. She imagined what that would look like when she was dead. The top of her head gone, a large bloodstain on the carpet. She thought that maybe she had seen a body like that once. She wondered who would find her and what that person would make of the fact that she was naked. Then she realized that Sylar would not, could not, leave the body the way he used to. So no one would find her like that. That made her a little sad. She felt like it was her right to counted as one of Sylar's victims, just as it was his right to kill her.

Since he seemed to be more interested in getting dressed than killing her at the moment, Elle turned over on her stomach and picked up a large t-shirt that was on the floor. She sat up and put it on. "How did you do it? Become President, I mean."

He pulled his own t-shirt over his head and sat down next to her. "It wasn't easy," he said with a smile. "First, I had to find Candice, which was... a challenge. Then I had to kill her, and she did not go easily. She created a lot of illusions and misdirection. And in the meantime, I had to learn everything about Nathan Petrelli, how to be Nathan Petrelli. I killed him the day after the convention, right after he was officially announced as the Vice Presidential candidate. And then you know what happened to my running mate after we won the election."

Elle was surprised that it had happened so late. When she thought about it, she knew that Candice was alive for at least six months after the Linderman Act was passed, which meant that she knew, or should have known, that Nathan had done most of the things that were attributed to him. Other than the breeding law Sylar signed, all those measures were initiated by the real Nathan Petrelli. "So you hid for two years as yourself, and no one noticed? Your face was everywhere."

Sylar shrugged his shoulders. "I grew a beard, changed my hair, lamented the unfortunate resemblance. It probably would not have fooled anyone who actually knew me, you, Bennet, Peter..." He trailed off at Peter's name, as though something else had occurred to him. He shook that off. "Although apparently, nothing would have fooled you. But people who only saw a picture, they were easy. And of course, I killed anyone who wouldn't let it go."

Elle nodded. "Of course." The sociopath in her understood completely.

He turned her sideways so that she was facing him. "Elle, do you—do you really think that you were responsible for the bomb?"

That was a loaded question. She supposed that was something she had always wished she could ask, whether she could have made a difference, but now she did not want to hear his answer. Deep down, she already knew. "Well, if I hadn't..., you never would have... And--"

She stopped talking when Sylar smiled. It was almost a cruel smile. She shook her head, as if to signal him not to say anything, even though it was no use. If he wanted to hurt her because of what she did to him, she had given him the perfect way. It occurred to her that it might even be better on him to have someone else to share the blame. For that reason, when he started to speak, she did not stop him, although she wanted to. "So you were sleeping with Peter, and he never told you that he was the bomb?" He shook his head in mock disappointment. "God, all this time, he's let you think you were to blame for four million people dying. And I always heard he was such a _nice_ guy."

At first, Elle thought that he had changed the subject. She had no idea what he meant by saying that Peter was "the bomb." Her mind actually went to Nineties slang before she realized what he was really claiming. Once she finally understood, she burst out laughing because that was the most ridiculous thing she had ever heard. She wondered why Sylar would even bother to tell that lie. He watched calmly as she laughed, waiting for her to finish. Just the look on his face made Elle's laughter die. He meant it, and Elle decided to give him a chance to convince her. Because she really, _really_ wanted to believe him. She wanted anything that would take away the weight of those deaths. "Are you trying to tell me that it wasn't my fault?"

He reached out and tucked her hair behind her ear, in what was an incredibly tender gesture. "I'm trying to tell you that on November 8, 2006, I goaded Peter until he lost control of his abilities and exploded. You can draw whatever conclusions from that that you want."

Elle let that sink in and thought about what conclusions she might want to draw. "Assuming I believe you, Peter didn't know. I never told him about us, about what I did to you. So he—he had no way of knowing that I blamed myself."

She could tell that was not what he wanted to hear. "Peter's a mindreader, among other things. He knew."

Elle shook her head. Sylar did not know Peter the way she did; he never would have invaded her privacy like that. But she knew that Sylar did not want to hear that either. He was jealous, which she loved. "I think you have the wrong idea about me and Peter. He didn't dump me for a stripper. He didn't tell me I was too immature. He didn't break my heart or anything like that. We were just friends, working together for a common ideal. I could see that he was keeping so much on the inside. Apparently, I didn't even know how much, if I believe your story. I told him that he needed a release, and I offered to help him find that. I did not want to label it or define it; it was just sex."

Sylar opened his mouth, probably to tell her that he did not care, but she would not believe that. She continued before he could interrupt. "But after about nine months, he told me that he wasn't good at not having labels and he liked definition. And I said, 'Well, then, Peter, I don't think we should sleep together anymore.' And he agreed, very easily in fact, but he wasn't looking to get out of it. _I_ broke it off with him."

"Why would you do that?"

She was glad that he had asked. "Because he didn't love me. We could define it however he wanted, but it would not change the fact that it was just sex. And I knew the difference because of you. The way you looked at me after a week and no sex, he was never going to look at me like that. So there's really no need for you to be jealous when I ended things with him because of you, and I thought you were dead." She waited a second, and then she said, "Or, actually, it was Gabriel. And I killed him."

Sylar stared at her for a second. "He really liked you."

"Who, Gabriel?" She smiled. "I really liked him, too." For a little while there, Elle forgot to be afraid of him. Just for moment, when he tried to lessen the guilt she felt over the bomb, she forgot who Sylar really was, or she remembered, depending on how she looked at it. But then she remembered that "yet." He still intended to kill her.

A thought filled her head, an instinct for survival. As much as she had tried to be resigned to it, she could not just wait here to die. She did not care how poetic it was or whether it was his right to kill her. She had to fight this, and she could, just not with her ability. She got up on her knees, knowing this was cheap and unworthy. But it was all she had. "No, you know what, it was you. You'd already killed Brian Davis when I met you. You, Sylar, were already a part of him when all of that went down. If you weren't, it wouldn't have happened like that. So, yeah, maybe I killed Gabriel, but I helped _you._" She inched toward him as she said this.

Sylar looked at her warily. "What are you doing?"

She put her arms around his neck. "I want you to consider that there may be other options than just killing me out of hand."

He sighed, pulling her off of him. "I knew it was too good to be true," he said, mostly to himself. "I thought you understood. I came here with one goal, and anything else I do or say does not change that goal. I'm going to kill you."

Elle did not let herself be pushed too far away from him. "What about all that talk about how the reason you want to kill me is that I do something to you? Come on. You want me, Gabriel, All you have to do is say it."

Sylar stood, and Elle looked up at him in a way she hoped was at least a little seductive, although she was slightly out of practice. "My name is Sylar. And you, _this,_ it's just a distraction. A really fun one, but a distraction nevertheless. I know what I want. I have made that decision. And you, and this, are not worth the risk of losing it."

Elle made her eyes go as wide as she could in order to convey sincerity. "You won't. I promise."

"Elle, I can't trust you, no matter what you're willing to promise right now. You made it clear just earlier tonight that you're still loyal to those people, even though they lied to you and did experiments on you. And I know you don't believe me about Peter. But even if we put them aside for a moment, you would still be passionately against everything I stand for as President. Do you want to know what's next? Congress is proposing a bill to mandate genetic testing as a condition of employment, and when it passes, I will sign it, making it impossible for evolved humans to make a living while in hiding. Do you really expect me to believe that you're going to stand by and let these measures continue when you have information that could blow me out of the water?"

She liked that he was only focusing on the part about her knowing this dangerous secret and that he was not expressing any interest in killing her for her ability or in revenge. She knelt taller on the bed, almost at standing height. "Do I really, though? So I tell people. Let's say I tell Peter. Now he's the most powerful guy I know, present company excluded. What is he going to do to you? You can heal, you can do all kinds of stuff, you can even get him to explode." Elle was still on the fence about that story, but it was convenient for her right now. "You might not get to be President anymore, but you'll be fine. And then you'll kill me. Trust me, I am too smart to even think about betraying you."

Sylar took a deep breath, and she could see that he wanted to buy into that theory. He put his hand on her cheek. "Unless you're willing to sacrifice yourself in order to help the cause, and you're just buying time to get the word out. You might not want to go to prison as a martyr, but if you're going to die either way, that's a completely different story."

Elle actually had not even thought of that. She was in full on self protection mode, and she was not thinking about the cause at all. "Just thinking that through right now, there are a lot of ways that could backfire. For example, if you were exposed, if people found out that you, the worst of all of us, had taken over the President, that would fuel the fires of fear. People will cry out for our deaths, but again, you'll be fine. And you can just become President as someone else. Or, with a little concentration and illusion, you could become the entire Congress. Nothing I do is going to hurt you; it's only going to hurt the cause. So I would rather live and try to use reason to convince you to mend your wicked ways." Really, Elle would just rather live.

He looked at her, amused. Apparently, he liked it when she got political and rational. He shook his head. "You can't change me. Elle."

Elle thought that was debatable since she had already done it once, but that was not what she meant anyway. "Not you, just your broad policy ideas. But that is an argument for another day."

"Elle." He said her name gently, shaking his head with a smile. "You don't have another day."

He kept saying that, but he had not killed her yet. She stared serenely back at him and waited. He did not make a move toward killing her. She took that as a good sign. Maybe like her with Peter being the bomb, he just wanted to be convinced that he could trust her with this incredible secret. She put her arms around his neck, bringing him down to her level. "Everything I did was out of guilt. But you're not dead, and we didn't kill four million people. You say I'm a distraction." She kissed him briefly on the lips. "I'm just a distraction." She kissed him again, and he let her, which was worth noting. "You know what you want, and that's power. You want it more than you want me." Another kiss. "But, Sylar, you don't have to choose." And another, slightly longer this time. "Wouldn't you rather have both?"

He pulled away from her, but she could see that he was tempted. "Show me you power."

Elle did not think that any good could come out of that, but she held up her hand, crackling with electricity. She kept the sparks fairly low power to try to trick him into thinking that it was not that great an ability. Elle could see from the lust developing in his eyes that clearly he was not fooled. It built slowly until he was looking at the electricity with a kind of longing she had never seen before. In that moment, she knew that she had never wanted anything as much as he wanted her power right then. Then she corrected herself. There was something that she desperately wanted, to live. She pressed her hand against his chest, intending to cause him pain. She wanted the ability to be associated with pain in his mind. She was not sure that it had that effect, since he barely even flinched. "I can give you a name," she said.

He looked up from her hand to her face. "What?"

She took it as a good sign that he was still talking, asking questions, not trying to kill her. "I can give you the name and address of someone else with this ability. How's that for proof that I'm putting my life above the cause?"

Sylar sighed. He took her hand off his chest and held it in both of his hands. He looked at that instead of her face. "I'm not looking for you to say that you'll put your life ahead of the cause."

Elle heard a slight emphasis on the words "your life." He wanted her to put something else ahead of the cause, which as far as she was concerned was the best news she had gotten all night. It was even better than the possibility that Peter was the bomb, because it was more likely to be true. "Oh, yeah, I can see how that would be a problem for you." She pulled her hand away from him and sat down on the bed. She knew that she was going to have to play this very carefully. "Self preservation's a given with me, but I guess I never really protected you. I never put you ahead of them. At least not when it mattered." She looked up at him. "But I have regretted that every single day since it happened. I ended things with Peter because he wasn't you." The regret was real, but the part about Peter was a manipulation of the facts.

He pushed her onto her back, and she knew this time it was not for sex. "Maybe if you'd said that unprompted..."

Elle tipped her head back to see the finger that was lingering over her forehead. "I did. I've already told you all of that at one time or another. I don't feel remorse, but I felt bad about you. I said that. I said that I loved you."

His finger stayed in place. It did not move, and it did not cut. "And then you said you didn't mean it."

"I said it to get you to tell me the truth. That doesn't mean that I didn't mean it." Elle closed her eyes. "I'll admit that I didn't know you long enough to love you, but there was something there. Probably what I should have said about Peter was that, not only did he not love me, but after nine months of sex, I didn't love him either. I should have told you that I would never feel for him what I felt for you after a week. You are still the only man I've ever really cared about." Elle had intended to keep talking until he stopped her, either by speaking or by killing her, but it was taking longer than she expected. She was running out of things to say. "I know that what I did to you was wrong, and all I'm asking for is a chance to make it all up to you. Look, you can say that I'm just a distraction and that sex is just a distraction, but I think we both know that you don't do this with every woman you come to kill. I know that you feel something for me. And I honestly still feel something for you too."

She stopped there. She was babbling. When he still did not say anything, Elle braced herself for the pain. She must have waited for at least a minute. Finally, eyes still closed, she shook her head. "I really need you to make a decision here."

There was nothing. Elle opened her eyes, and that pointer finger was no longer in her line of sight. She sat up to scan the room, but she did not see Sylar at all. She looked behind herself to make sure that she had not sat up out of her dead body, like a ghost on television. She hadn't. She was really still alive.

She went out into the living room. Maybe he just went to get a drink. Maybe he did not like to kill when he was dehydrated. He was not out there either. The jacket, the tie, the dress shirt, they were all gone. Sylar was gone, and Elle was alive.

–


	6. Epilogue: November 7, 2011

**Author's Note:** Um, this has like the slightest spoiler for "The Princess Bride." (But you've had 22 years to see it, so... I don't think it's really even a spoiler for anything.)

–

–

_I know tomorrow brings the consequence at hand, but I keep living this day like the next will never come—_Fiona Apple

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**Epilogue—November 7, 2011**

Sylar knew that leaving Elle alive was sloppy. It was a weakness he could not afford. But he listened to her, talking, insisting that he was still the only man she ever cared about. Without really thinking about it, he took one step back from her, and then he took another. The next thing he knew, he had phased through the wall and walked right into her living room. He came to this apartment with the intention of killing her, and once she knew he was Sylar, he felt that the choice was really out of his hands. It was no longer about her power or what she had done to him; all that mattered then was what she knew.

But when he was in the living room, still able to hear every word thanks to the ability he had gotten from that mechanic in Montana, he made an unbelievably reckless choice. He just gathered up the last of his clothes and kept walking. The decision made no sense. She had proven that night that she was just as fickle and unstable as he had thought. And yet, when she said that she liked him, that she wanted to make her mistakes up to him, he believed her for no other reason than that he wanted it to be true.

He waited a week for the fallout from his momentary weakness, but nothing happened. He went back to Chicago with the intention of fixing the mistake. He was met by a different Elle, a loving and devoted Elle. The first thing she said was that he forgot to get the name of the woman with her ability. Then she gave it to him, along with an address. So he did not kill her that night either. For about a year now, he had gone on, seeing her and not killing her.

They lay together, post sex, in her Baltimore apartment, where she had moved to be more convenient for him. She was staring at him, and he imagined that she could tell that there was something weighing on his mind. It was the same thing that always weighed on his mind. How long could they keep doing this? This time, with the five year anniversary looming, there was a little more to that question. "Elle, how loyal to me are you really?"

She laughed to herself like that was exactly the question she had been waiting for. It took her a moment before she said anything. "You know in The Princess Bride, when they're in the Fire Swamp and he's telling the story? That part, 'Good night, Westley. Sleep well. I'll most likely kill you in the morning.' That's what this last year has been like. 'I love you, Elle. I'll most likely kill you next time.'"

Sylar had never told Elle that he loved her, and he never would, but that was not the point of what she was saying anyway. He was glad if he was giving her the impression that she should not get too complacent. He believed wholeheartedly that the day would come when he would be forced to kill her. If his quest for power ever came in conflict with her life, he would not hesitate in eliminating her. After a year, he knew that day must be coming soon.

Elle wiggled closer to him. "I was loyal to the Company because it was all I knew, and I was loyal to the resistance because I believed in their cause. With you... I am not loyal to you just because you haven't killed me yet. This isn't gratitude or reciprocity. It's because you're the first man who has ever put me ahead of himself. Or at least, you put your desire for me ahead of your own safety."

That was true, and it was something that bothered him every time he thought about it. "Yeah, I really shouldn't have done that."

Elle smiled. She knew that she got under his skin, and that was probably the most annoying thing about her. Of course, it was his fault for continuing to see her. She sparked up her hand for him to see. "I saw how much you wanted my ability, but you obviously decided that night that there was something else about me that was more valuable to you. And for that reason, I am completely loyal to you. So what is it? What are you planning now that you think is going to change that?"

For a second, he considered telling her. It would probably be better to force the conflict. He really needed her to give him a reason to cut this weakness out of his life. But he was not ready for that. "It's nothing bad," he lied. "It's just that Suresh found the cure." He had not discussed his plans with Mohinder yet, but he knew he could bring the weak minded scientist along. They had a meeting scheduled for the morning, and then it would be a done deal. "So this whole mess is almost over."

Elle flopped onto her back to think about this development. "A cure. I didn't think that was possible. I don't want to be cured."

Sylar shook his head. He was glad that she had said that, so that he did not have to insist that she stay away from anyone claiming to have it. "No, you don't have to. In fact, don't." He took her hand in his. "I like you just the way you are."

She looked at him adoringly, no hint that she suspected anything. "You have to go, back to your wife." She liked to tease him about having a wife.

He kissed her deeply and got out of the bed. As he pulled on his pants, he tried to remember what she had said earlier. "Good night, Elle. I'll probably kill you next time."

"Most likely kill me," she corrected.

She had no idea how accurate that was. Sooner or later, she would find out what he had really done with that "cure." He could blame it on Mohinder's fatal mistake—he would enjoy blaming Mohinder for the genocide—but when they all died, Elle would know the truth. And then he would most likely have to kill her. Knowing the end of this affair was in sight, along with the end of Elle, Sylar pulled her up into another kiss. "Right. Most likely."

**END**

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**Author's Note:** So I've had several reviewers ask about a sequel. Here's the deal: Maybe. I've been thinking a little about where the timeline would go if there was no reset after the five year anniversary. (Which kind of takes away from the impact of this epilogue, so don't think of it like that. Here there is a reset.) I won't be writing it anytime soon, if ever, but my Sylar/Elle has to be all AU from now on anyway, so I may come back around to this universe.


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